I finally did it. After years and years of knitting, this happened.
It snapped in my hand. I got so upset, I decided to buy a new knitting set. However, I am not sure what to buy and I need it fast, because next week Gordon and I are escaping on a tiny vacation to Daytona. To the same hotel where Coastal Magic was held.
They got us with that beach. It was right outside the hotel, but because it was February, we couldn’t swim. I need a vacation in the worst way and I can only take a short one, because edits must be done. So instead of one long trip, we will be making several shorter ones. I want to knit on vacation. It’s relaxing. My plan is to swim until I can swim no more, then sit on a balcony, stare at the ocean, listen to Graphic Audio, and knit.
Help me, BDH. I have one week to buy replacement knitting needles and have them delivered.
Requirements:
- Interchangeable circulars, the kind you screw the cable in
- Soft cables
- Sharp tips
- Doesn’t matter wood, metal, or whatever
As a bribe, I offer this tiny snippet of a completely different beach. Don’t tell anybody.
The Glowing Ocean
Dead bodies were heavy as hell.
I knew this. It was one of those academic facts you learned from reading, never expecting to encounter it in real life, until you had to drag 8 corpses about a hundred feet through a stone passageway and then carry them over grassy bank to a boat in the middle of the night.
In the fantasy books filling my shelves, heroes slung limp humans over their shoulders with a manly grunt and then hauled them like they weighed nothing. The level of bullsh*t involved was criminal. Reynald was a lot stronger than me, and he grunted, strained, and took frequent breaks. It didn’t help that all of them, with the exception of Lasa, were huge.
Finally, all the corpses were in. Reynald paused on the dock and held his hand out. I took it – it was rock steady – and he carefully helped me into the boat. He put his hand on the mooring line and stomped twice on the dock boards.
I glanced at him.
“For luck,” he said. “It’s tradition.”
This world or ours, sailors were superstitious everywhere.
Reynald freed the mooring line, climbed into the boat, and started tying and untying various ropes. The sail caught the wind, unfurled, and the boat slipped into the current, still slightly rough from the recent rain. Reynald secured the lines and moved to the big wooden rudder at the stern, about a foot from where I sat on my bench. The corpses, trussed up in canvas, lay on the bottom of the boat like cordwood.
We sat silently, watching the estates of the Anchor Drop slide by, darker shadows in the night, marked by an occasional lantern. The sky above us was smudged with clouds.
When Reynald told me he bought a boat, I somehow defaulted to one of those small fishing boats people towed behind their trucks all over Texas highways as soon as the summer heat started. Which was ridiculous, but that was where my brain went. What Reynald purchased was nowhere near that.
The boat looked like something ancient Vikings might have taken upriver to raid the English monasteries, except it was less of a dragon boat and more of a swan. It sat low in the water, a graceful, sleek wooden vessel about 30 feet long and 7 feet wide with a single mast supporting a complex green sail. Its sides curved from the raised bow, swooping low in the middle, then rising again at the stern, crowned with a small figurehead of a horned sea serpent. The serpent sported a mouth of scary teeth, and they weren’t wood. Someone had ripped those fangs out of the mouth of an actual marine monster and glued them in.
The boat sped down river. We rounded a bend, and the current dumped us into a much wider, calmer Dokkon. A cold breeze flung moisture and a hint of salt in my face.
We skirted a wooded island with roofs peeking through the trees, passed a big wooden tradership with a bloated hull, and then two people in a small fishing boat. They didn’t pay us any mind, and I didn’t look too closely at what they were doing either.
The river widened. Docks crowded the banks, with wooden ships of all sizes moored for the night. A sea of dark masts and stowed sails rose on both sides. A few more minutes, and Dokkon carried us out to sea.
The ocean spread before our boat, endless and calm. The clouds melted away, and an enormous sky reigned above, studded with glittering stars. Three moons spilled their light onto the water: Orde, a giant, silver orb with a hint of gold; Mor, a much smaller ruby-red waxing crescent; and Kula, the smallest of the three, a grass-green first quarter moon.
The view took my breath away. I smelled the briny salt water, I felt the wind, and the steady movement of the boat under my feet, so it had to be real. But it was so… magical.
We turned left and kept going, further from the mouth of the river, within the view of the coastline. I could’ve sailed across this ocean forever.
Ahead something shimmered in the water, like a spill of faint fluorescent paint. Reynald steered for it. The swirls of blue and pink drew closer and closer, rippling through the water. The boat slid through them, and I saw a faint outline of glowing algae suspended like a floating island over the ink-black depths. Tiny fish with luminescent fins darted through the frilly leaves.
The boat slowed to a leisurely drift.
Reynald let go of the rudder and sat on the other bench across from me.
“It’s lovely,” I told him.
He nodded. He seemed lighter, almost carefree. “I always liked the ocean.”
“When did you learn how to sail?” He was born in the North Middle Fields, a large fertile plain that stretched north of Kair Toren’s hills.
“During the Corios campaign.” His voice was quiet and light. “They had us raiding the coastal forts in small boats, trying to keep the defenders guessing when and where we’d show up. The second week in, our captain took an arrow to the chest and went overboard. We drifted for hours before we figured out how to work the boat. I decided that sailing was something I should know how to do.”
“You’re a very good sailor,” I told him.
He smiled. “Thank you.”
It felt like we stopped moving completely. We just hung there, between the ocean and the sky, watching the trail of three moons shine on the water.
“What are we waiting for?”
“The wind,” Reynald said. “We’ll need it to pick up a bit more before we start.”
I didn’t mind if the wind didn’t pick up for a while. It was so beautiful here. Floating on a starry night across a magical ocean, just me and Reynald. It felt almost romantic, except I was in the boat with a trained killer and there were corpses by our feet. So Kair Toren.
…{cut for spoilery reasons}…
Reynald rose and grabbed the first corpse by its shoulders wrapped in canvas. “The wind is up.”
I picked up the legs, and we heaved the body overboard. It hit the water with a heavy splash. Seven corpses followed, sinking below surface.
“Won’t the bodies float back up when they start to decompose?” I asked. The last thing we needed was for that dead crew to wash up ashore with the tide.
“Hold that thought.”
He pulled a small barrel from a spot at the front of the boat, unsheathed a knife, and pried the snug lid open. A stench hit me, reeking of rotting fish and something else, something sickening and gross.
I gagged.
Reynald emptied the barrel into the water and tossed it into the ocean. He moved through the boat, fast like he was on solid ground, and pulled a line. The sail unfurled again, and the boat slid across the water. We turned left, drawing a wide U around the spot where we dropped the bodies.
Something moved beneath the luminescent ocean. I barely caught a glimpse of it as we sped by.
I looked over my shoulder.
A huge triangular fin pierced the water, trailing a long yellow spike. Another. A third… A massive body broke the surface, half as big as our boat. I caught a glimpse of broad armored jaws, and then it dove under. The ocean behind us churned as if boiling.
“What bodies?” Reynald asked and gave me a wide smile.
